Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

We’re back to introduce our 6th Annual Clyde River Lectures for 2018. There are some big topics featured, so you don’t want to miss any of these lectures. Have you ever wanted to know all the great work that the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation does and how we can engage ourselves in preserving Island history? Or you may have seen a copy of JoDee Samuelson’s map of “Old Mills in Prince Edward Island”. You will hear about her research and see artifacts from the mills in Clyde River. And, finally, when did you ever get a full hour with a doctor? Dr. Newman will be making a house call in Clyde River to take us on a medical journey through epidemics and innovations in his time. Mark your calendar. All are welcome.

Saturday, January 27th – 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. – Dr. David Keenlyside – “An overview of the work of the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation” – The Foundation manages seven PEI museums (Elmira Railway Museum, Basin Head Fisheries Museum, Orwell Corner Historic Village and Agriculture Heritage Museum, Beaconsfield Historic House, Eptek Art & Culture Centre, Acadian Museum, and Green Park Shipbuilding Museum & Yeo House) and is responsible for more than 90,000 artifacts. The Foundation manages the PEI Museum & Heritage Awards and publishes the popular Island Magazine. David will offer an update on the current work of the Foundation and some guidance on how we can help preserve Island history.

Dr. David Keenlyside is Executive Director of the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation. Originally from British Columbia, David is an archaeologist by profession and worked at the National Museum of Man and, later, Canadian Museum of Civilization for 35 years as Atlantic Provinces Archaeologist. David has a broad range of heritage interests and has served in various capacities on professional and volunteer organizations across Canada.

Saturday, February 10th – 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.– JoDee Samuelson –“Watermills in PEI, especially those in Clyde River” – For her Master of Arts in Island Studies from UPEI, JoDee wrote her thesis on water-powered mills on Prince Edward Island and Gotland Island, Sweden. Her interest in mills began while she lived in Clyde River, across the river from the Dixon/Scott Mill and down the road from the Beer’s Sawmill on the Bannockburn Road. JoDee will pass along her research on the mills on the Clyde River that at one time provided flour, oatmeal, and sawn lumber for a prosperous ambitious community.

JoDee Samuelson grew up on the Canadian prairies and has lived on the beautiful south shore of Prince Edward Island for the past 30 years. Jody is an award-winning filmmaker and writes a column “The Cove Journal” for Charlottetown’s monthly arts magazine, The Buzz.

Dr. Stanley “Lewis” Newman was raised in New Haven. He spent his early school years in New Haven and then Borden School for Grades 9 & 10. He attended Prince of Wales College and went on to Dalhousie for his undergraduate and medical education, graduating in 1969. He began his general family practice in Sydney, Nova Scotia. In 1971, he moved back to PEI and had a general family practice in Charlottetown at the Polyclinic until 2006. Between 2006 and 2012, he was a Hospitalist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. For 15 years he was House Doctor at Beach Grove Home. He retired in 2012.

The Clyde River Lecture Series takes place at the Riverview Community Centre at 718 Clyde River Road. All presentations will be followed by refreshments and a social time. These events are a great chance to get out in the winter to learn about and discuss our interesting local history. Our museum will be open to view Clyde River artifacts and heritage photos. For more information on this series, please contact Vivian Beer, vivian@eastlink.ca.

This is the tenth excerpt form Meadow Bank W.I. Tweedsmuir History published in 1951.

Industries

Industries in a province such as ours must, of course, be connected either directly or indirectly with the land or the sea. Manufacturing must be limited and closely linked with the products of land and sea. Since pioneer days then, agriculture in its various forms has been the basic industry of the district and like most other parts of the province mixed farming has engaged the attention of the great majority. Fortunately, wood lots were cared for reasonably well so that logging and sawing chiefly for local needs have been interesting and profitable occupations.

The incident has been recalled of many years ago when Mr. Spurgeon Hickox set up a rotary saw at Mr. Fred Hydes and sawed lumber for those of the district. Since that time, however, firewood has been the chief asset of the woods. Today, on the Island, pulpwood is an important industry to which one member of our district, Mr. Hyde, has contributed.

Meadow Bank farm being all shore farms offered an excellent opportunity for the fishing of clams, quahaugs and oysters, the last being fished extensively in recent years. These find a ready market in Canada and United States.

Before the days of commercial fertilizers, wood ashes, as the land was cleared of the virginal forests, provided potash, and mussel mud from the river bed was loaded into flat-bottomed boats and spread on land providing the necessary lime. Later mud diggers were placed on the ice over the mussel beds and with a horse in the capstan, huge forkfuls were loaded into waiting sleighs. Seaweed, too, was a valuable fertilizer but due to some disease, it is almost killed out. Up to that time it was a happy feeding ground for nervous flocks of wild geese which were much sought after by sportsmen.

Fox farming is one of the later industries. It had its beginning years ago when two men bought a pair of foxes from the Natives. In this community, almost every farmer had his own individual fox ranch. Although the Island still can boast a lead in quality and production, there are very few foxes ranged here since the general slump in prices during World War II.

Our certified seed potatoes have reached a high state of perfection and command a ready market in many parts of the world. Turnips are grown for feed and export. Dairying and the raising of beef cattle engage the time and attention of our farmers. Surplus hay is pressed and sold. At first milk was processed at home into cheese and cream into butter. Then a cheese factory was operated for a number of years at Cornwall. This was in 1925 bought by Cornwall Community Club, torn down and rebuilt as a skating rink. Now, cream is shipped to creameries in Charlottetown.

Many changes have taken place in the method of farming from the time of the reaping hook, sickle and buck rake. The first binders, a Maxwell, was owned by Henry Hyde and used by his sons until a few years ago. Threshing was first done with a flail then the horsepower mill, later the cleaner was added, then engines and tractors. Now, we can boast of the first combine being used on the same farm by R.D. MacKinnon (1950) who has also introduced a clipper for the harvesting of grass silage.

Transportation

S.S. Harland on the West River

For the convenience of travelers, the S.S. Harland made two round trips every Saturday from Charlottetown to the West River Bridge calling en route at MacEachern’s Wharf. The Strathgartney, Hazel R and other motor launches privately-owned and subsidized by the government made similar trips from Bonshaw to the capital city on market days. Their time tables varied as the tide changed. Now since hard surfacing of main highways and the advent of trucks and cars, this mode of travel has become outdated.

Communications

In the early days mail was received semi-weekly at the Cornwall Post Office. About the year 1910 mail began to come daily and boxes were placed at each gateway. Donald MacPhail (4 years), Dave Lowry and Seymour Scott and sons have been our mail couriers ever since.

A privately-owned telephone company serving the communications of Cornwall, York Point, North River, East Wiltshire and Meadow Bank was in operation as early as 1912 with a switch board at Cornwall. In 1947 we sold to the Island Telephone Company and now are on the Charlottetown Exchange.

Editor’s Introduction: We are pleased to feature an article from guest writer Peter Rukavina. Many will know Peter from his very popular blog www.ruk.ca. He was also recently our guest along with his son Oliver and Oliver’s dog Ethan at the presentation, The History of Clow’s Store. You may not be as aware of his work with Yankee Publishing’s The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

In Clyde River, the “Farmer’s Almanac” as we call it has shared an important place in our farming history and continues to across Prince Edward Island. Many times around a kitchen table as a child, I would hear farmers talking about what the Farmer’s Almanac was predicting in terms of weather for the coming season with almost as much reverence as to the gospel the minister had preached on the past Sunday. Inevitably, there would be some reference to the behaviour of animals in weather predictions. I thought there must be some very wise people living in New England, because other sources could not seem to achieve the same level of accuracy in their predictions or fully garner these farmers’ respect.

I am pleased to find out that we have an Island contribution to this highly respected publication. Thank you, Peter, for sharing your story with us and for offering a glimpse into the history of this fine publication and the dedicated team behind it. On behalf of our community, our farmers and gardeners, we thank you all for your great work.

My Time with The Old Farmer’s Almanac

I’ve spent every workday for the past 20 years deep inside the heart of a publication that was founded during George Washington’s first term as U.S. President.

That publication is The Old Farmer’s Almanac, first published in 1792 and every single year since, without exception – making it North America’s oldest continuously published periodical.

Since 1939 The Old Farmer’s Almanac has been owned by Yankee Publishing, based in the tiny village of Dublin, New Hampshire. While Dublin is, technically, my “workplace,” I do my work from a desk in downtown Charlottetown, collaborating remotely with a team of designers and editors in New Hampshire to make Almanac.com, the web version of the publication. While I missed the founding of the Almanac by 174 years, I was there for the birth of Almanac.com, and have helped nurture it along ever since.

As you might imagine, it takes an interesting cast of characters to make a publication as storied as The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and beyond the technical challenges of keeping one of the continent’s busiest websites humming (with almost 50 million visitors in 2015), my work remains interesting because of those people and the ramshackle collection of buildings they call their working home.

Yankee Publishing is right in the middle of Dublin, population 1,597. You can see Yankee yourself, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on the Almanac Webcam, online at almanac.com/webcam. Right across the road is Dublin Town Hall; up the hill in the other direction is the Dublin School, a private prep school founded in 1935, the same year as Yankee. Down the road a bit is the Dublin General Store – an excellent place to pick up a sandwich for lunch – and up the road and around a bend or two is Dublin Lake, surrounded by the homes of summer residents from across New England.

Yankee’s headquarters have evolved over the years as the company has grown, and as you walk the hallways you pass through various buildings that have been joined together, from an old house at the front – I’ve been in the basement and seen its ancient foundation – through more modern additions as you walk back through the company’s offices.

On the northeast corner of the main building – named the Sagendorph Building for Robb Sagendorph, the company’s founder – is a chalk board inscribed “This Bulletin Board is owned and maintained by YANKEE for the benefit of the citizens of DUBLIN.” On the board you’ll find notices about deaths in the village, about church suppers, and about the annual community gathering down the hill at Yankee Field.

While I’ve been a “telecommuter” to Yankee for 20 years, an important part of my relationship with the company has been travel to Dublin three or four times a year, something I’ve been doing since the very beginning. Telecommuting is great, and with tools like email and Skype, it’s almost like “being there.” But you can’t have lunch over Skype, and it’s hard to get to know people by email. So my regular visits are an important way of connecting us.

One of the characteristics of the company is the strong “Yankee” sense of self-reliance: if there’s a need for a desk or table in an office, the Yankee sensibility is to find someone to build a desk or a table. The idea of simply ordering one from a catalogue isn’t in the Yankee DNA. That makes for a lot of wonderful desks and tables that will last lifetimes. True to form, my part-time office, in the “crow’s nest” on the third floor, has a hand-built table that’s built like a tank. And contrasting the modern computer and monitor on the table is a room filled with everything from a decades-old barometer to a wreath of unknown origin that’s been hanging on the wall for as long as I’ve been there.

One of the highlights of my early days working on the Almanac was the chance to work with the late John Pierce, the Almanac’s Group Publisher. John died suddenly and unexpectedly eight years ago; his death was a huge loss for his family, for me, and for the enterprise. In a blog post about John at the time, titled My Friend the Poet Biologist, I wrote, in part:

More than anyone else John understood how important the sheer improbability of Yankee is to the success of the enterprise. He was able to simultaneously understand that it made no sense at all to run a national publication with a circulation of 4 million from a rambling campus of cobbled-together old buildings in rural New Hampshire and also to celebrate that very fact as being integral to the spirit of the place.

While more a polymath than an eccentric himself, John certainly appreciated the eccentricities of others (a good quality to have working at Yankee, of necessity a company made up almost entirely of eccentrics — how else do you find staff equally skilled in begonia planting schedules and the position of the Moon in the astrological zodiac?).

That spirit of eccentric improbability, one that John understood so well, oozes from the walls of Yankee: the editors and designers that toil diligently over each year’s edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac take the charge of its founder, Robert B. Thomas, to be “useful with a pleasant degree of humour” very seriously. And they are the perfect lot for this task: the editors know more about the sun, the Moon and the stars, about the weather and how to predict it, about cooking and gardening, about the best time to wean a calf and the best day to cut your hair, than you can possibly imagine; the designers are well-versed in using modern technology while, at the same time, preserving the visual spirit of the Almanac. They are a fascinating group of people to work with.

The beating heart of the Almanac itself can be found on the second floor of the Sagendorph Building in the library around which the editors’ offices are arranged. On the shelves of that library are a complete set of editions of The Old Farmer’s Almanac back to 1792, there for both practical reference, for inspiration, and to reinforce the duty we all have to the publication’s history.

One summer night last July, after everyone else had gone home, I went down to the library and pulled the bound volumes off the shelf. What things to hold: hand set in metal type, printed on a letterpress, and, in 1792, yet to gain the “Old” in the title for another 56 years.

But yet at the same time as being relics of the past, these early editions bear many similarities to the Almanac that I spend my working life helping to craft: they are, indeed, “useful with a pleasant degree of humour”; and in their pages you’ll find the same guide to the rhythms that you’ll find in the pages – digital and printed – of today’s editions.

If you do the math you’ll realize that 2017 minus 1792 is 225 and so next year’s edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac will be the 225th. To mark this occasion there’s much work happening now to refresh the pages – on a visit to Dublin in February I saw some of this work, and it is stunning. When you see the 2017 Almanac on the newsstand this fall – it goes on sale in early September – it will look like the book you remember, yes, but with a renewed sense of its past. I’m looking forward to it.

It may seem an unusual thing to work for a centuries-old publication from 630 miles away and in another country. But you don’t get to be 225 years old without knowing how to evolve with the times, and, after two decades of working with The Old Farmer’s Almanac from here in Prince Edward Island, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to me.

One of the tools I built early-on in the development of Almanac.com was a tide predictions calculator – you can see it online at almanac.com/astronomy/tides. As part of testing the tool, I pulled a reproduction of a 100-year-old edition off my shelf – reproductions of the 100 and 200 year-old editions are issued each year – and compared the tides for Boston, MA listed there with the tides that the new online tool reported. They were accurate to within a minute of each other, reinforcing that while so much of life is unpredictable and topsy-turvy, the cycles of the natural world have an unceasing rhythm to them: making those rhythms more accessible and more obvious is a pleasant, fulfilling task, and one I hope to keep at for years to come.

If you happen to be passing through Dublin, NH – it’s on Route 101 between Nashua and Keene – be sure to stop in and say hello. Give a knock on the front door and Linda, the unceasingly helpful and pleasant receptionist, will welcome you in, and you’ll be able to pick up a copy of the latest Almanac, get updated on the weather, and get a sense, in a small way, of the joys I’ve experienced having Robert B. Thomas’s yearly guide at the centre of my work life.

Student Biz PEI provides support to students between 16-24 years of age interested in starting their own summer business.

Qualifying students receive $1,000 to offset startup costs to get their business off the ground, access to up to $1,000 in repayable loan (if needed), and upon successful completion of the program a $500 contribution towards their post-secondary studies.

In addition to the financial support, Student Biz PEI provides the students with mentorship and training in business planning, financial management, advertising and marketing. This mentorship and training will help build the foundation for each student to successfully operate their business throughout the summer. Students across PEI are eligible to apply, as well as students attending school off island but planning to return for the summer.

Two farms in the area will be participating in Open Farm Day on September 21st. Matos Winery and Distillery in St. Catherine’s along with Don Northcott’s farm in Clyde River, home of his company Phytocultures.

Matos award-winning wine was offered as speaker gifts at the Clyde River History Lecture Series, and Don Northcott’s farm provided apples for our Apple Pie Festival. Both of these operations are innovative businesses, so it will be interesting to see what’s new on the farm.

Phytocultures/Don Northcott’s Farm:

Open Farm Day hours: 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
1017 Linwood Road, Clyde River
Taste new grape varieties and learn about their exciting new berry crop developments

Matos Winery & Distillery:

Open Farm Day hours: 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
West River Road, St. Catherine’s
See their vineyards and visit their shop which features wines, spirits, pottery, and wine-related items. Wine samples will be available for free.

Visit the following link to see the list of PEI farms participating in this year’s Open Farm Day.

Burnside Community Care in Clyde River launched their new website this week. You can visit the site to learn more about the Burnside facility and services. The website address is www.burnsidecommunitycare.com. The site features many photos of the building and rooms including a story and photos from their recent Open House which was well attended. There is an overview of the community along with a few landscape photos of Clyde River and a link to the Clyde River community website. To view Burnside Community Care’s site, click here.

I stopped by Don Northcott’s farm today and his orchard was busy with customers picking apples. Don says it may be the best crop of apples he has ever had. With temperatures in the high teens and not a cloud in the sky, it was a perfect day for such a wholesome adventure. He has a number of apple varieties.

An apple picker from Charlottetown said that she found out about Don’s apple farm on our website. She “didn’t want to drive all the way to Cardigan”. Her family had already filled 5-6 bags and they were coming back for more bags to fill. The apples are so beautiful. I picked up a bag and shared it with my Aunt Hilda.

So for all of you Charlottetown folks, here are the directions:

When you arrive in Clyde River (just 15 minutes west of Charlottetown) on the main Trans Canada Highway, turn right on the Lynwood Road. Don usually has a sandwich board sign out by the highway to direct you. Just drive in the Lynwood Road a short way and make a left on the lane way that leads into the orchard by the big red barn. Bags are provided.

The Clyde River Apple Orchard is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.